Out and on our way just after 8am. No wind today, made for a pleasant enough drive up to Kalgoorlie, where we stopped for fuel and to restock the pantry. It was still a bit early, but we had lunch as well before jumping back on the road and heading toward Menzies. It's all in the timing as they say, and this time we hit the sweet spot, pulling out just in front of the 8 metre wide, wide load crawling along the highway going in our direction.
We didn't stop at Menzies, but much to my surprise it's a very clean, very neat, very small, town. I had imagined that everything 'out here' would be rough and ready and dry and dirty, but no, they appear to be neat and tidy. On we went straight to Leonora, which is where we are pulling up for the night. Leonora is small, maybe one street bigger than Menzies, and then another surprise: the one caravan park is clean and green (real grass!) and appears to be almost full. The oddest thing though is that the office is only open from 8-10am and 4-6pm. Apparently we are supposed to wait outside until they turn up, but as they were there they booked us in and we found our spot, possibly the biggest and best on in the park.
We wandered the 200 metres up to town, had a glass of wine in the 'genteel' bar, as opposed to the 'skimpy bar', and then strolled over to the info place. It turns out that there is a ghost town just outside of Leonora, called Gwalia. It's story is that it was a mine founded in 1895 and a corrugated iron and hessian bag town sprang up next to it. While it was never gazetted as a town as such, it persisted right through to 1963 when, following an accident and unexpected and immediate closure of the mine, it disappeared totally within three weeks.
Well, it didn't disappear, as the following snaps will attest, just that the people caught the first train out of town and never came back. The mine buildings etc became a museum and some of the better house have been reoccupied, but there is a bunch of building still standing and apart from being empty, are just like they were when they were abandoned in 1963.
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| Shops. Gwalia WA |
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| Gwalia WA |
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| Ex Mine works, now a museum. Gwalia WA |
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| Murals. Mine Museum. Gwalia WA |
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| Murals. Mine Museum. Gwalia WA |
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| Hole in the ground. Gwalia WA |
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| Hotel. Gwalia WA |
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| Gwalia WA |
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| Gzunder tree. Gwalia WA |
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| Gwalia WA |
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| Gwalia WA |
The mine underwent some ownership changes but is working again, however it appears to have no impact on the ghost town of Gwalia, given that everyone now lives in Leonora, just 2km up the road. Mind you the tram they installed in 1910 has long gone.
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